Stop Trying to Teach Decision Making. Fix the Culture Instead
Author: Julie Chance, Founder of Action Strategies by Design
In my experience advising leaders, they often ask, “Can you teach our people to make better decisions?” It’s a reasonable request, but it usually addresses the symptom rather than the root cause.
Decision-making isn’t just about knowing what to do; it’s about whether your team feels equipped, trusted, and empowered to act.
Whether you realize it or not, your organizational culture influences how your people make decisions every day. Long before someone weighs up their options, culture has already shaped what they believe is expected, what’s safe to do, and how much ownership they’re willing to take. That’s why, in an environment of continuous change, organizations don’t always have a decision-making problem. More often, they have a culture problem.
Why Training Isn’t the Answer
When I ask leaders what they want most from their staff, they almost always say, “I want people who take initiative, think independently, and make good decisions.” The irony is that often the very systems and cultures they have built discourage those behaviors.
I was reminded of this by a story from a Learning and Development leader at Greyhound. An operations manager called, desperate for training after one of their bus drivers received a speeding ticket. It was a classic example of why “more training” is rarely the cure for a performance issue.
Decision-making is no different. Simply teaching someone a framework doesn’t automatically make them a better decision-maker. People develop sound judgment through modeling, mentorship, and the freedom to experiment—all within an environment that provides the space to learn from the outcomes of their choices.
Building the System: Characteristics of a Culture That Supports Better Decisions
Research from Bain & Company suggests that companies with a high-performance culture grow about 20% faster than average companies and are roughly 50% better on a comprehensive measure of decision effectiveness.
If culture plays such a significant role in decision quality, the question is: what do leaders need to build into their culture to help people make better decisions at every level in an environment of continuous change?
1. Clarity That Drives Alignment
A culture that supports decision-making prioritizes clarity: a shared understanding of purpose, values, and vision. These should stay consistent enough that people can anchor to them even as circumstances shift. Team alignment around these fundamentals gives teams a stronger basis for making decisions, as without that bigger picture, employees must rely on instructions rather than exercise their own judgment.
Think about the difference between navigating with a paper map versus GPS. If you’re from the pre-GPS era (not that long ago), you remember how looking at a physical map forced you to scan the whole route, orienting yourself to the terrain and gaining a sense of the broader journey. Now, when we use GPS navigation, we enter a destination and follow turn-by-turn instructions without ever considering the bigger picture. If the route changes or the signal drops, we’re far less equipped to find another way because we never truly understood where we were going in the first place.
Goals, priorities, and roles provide the context for what needs to happen now. These can change, particularly during continuous change. When they do, leaders need to explain what changed and why. On my own team, I’ll say, I know I said this was the priority last week. Here’s what changed.
Decision-making authority defines where ownership sits. Employees need to know what they can decide on their own, when to seek input, and when to escalate to the next level. Without that clarity, decisions get delayed or pushed up unnecessarily.
2. Trust That Enables Action
Clarity tells people where they’re going. Trust gives them the confidence to act on it, and that starts with psychological safety. If every decision that doesn’t match what a manager would have chosen gets criticized, or if raising a concern feels risky, people stop making decisions. They wait to be told what to do instead.
Trust also depends on transparency. One of the best ways leaders develop decision-makers is by explaining the thinking behind their own decisions. Author L. David Marquet describes this idea in his book Turn the Ship Around as “thinking out loud.” Rather than simply announcing a decision, explain what influenced it, what trade-offs were considered, and why a particular direction was chosen.
This works both ways. When leaders explain how they reached a decision, they model the thinking they want to see from their teams. When employees share what they intend to do and why, leaders can understand their reasoning and give them room to act. The result is greater trust and stronger decision-making through experience.
3. Learning Over Perfection
Perfectionism drastically slows or even halts decision-making, leaving us trapped in a cycle of over-analysis and indecision. People won’t get every decision right, nor should they be expected to. And let’s be honest, as leaders we don’t get every decision right either. What matters is creating an environment where team members are encouraged to learn, experiment, and improve rather than fear getting it wrong.
As leaders, how do you respond when a decision doesn’t go as planned? Do you assign blame, or do you hold people accountable in a way that helps them learn? Blame says, “You screwed this up.” Accountability asks, “This didn’t go as expected. What do you need to do differently, and what support do you need?”
Research from Harvard Business Review shows that people don’t learn from feedback simply because they receive it. Feedback that triggers shame can make people focus on protecting themselves, while guilt can keep their attention on what they did and what they can do differently. The goal, then, is to give feedback in a way that keeps the focus on the work and creates an opportunity to learn.
A learning culture also encourages teams to revisit decisions as new information emerges. We’re all susceptible to confirmation bias and the sunk cost fallacy, which can keep us committed to a decision simply because we’ve already invested in it. Regularly reassessing decisions permits teams to change course when the circumstances no longer support the original choice.
4. Diversity of Thought
Leaders who want better decisions actively seek out perspectives that challenge their own.
According to Cloverpop, developers of a leading enterprise decision intelligence platform, diversity across gender, ethnicity, culture, experience, and thinking style improves decision-making outcomes up to 87% of the time. However, diversity of thought also introduces potential for conflict. When managed poorly, that dynamic produces friction; when managed well by fostering healthy conflict, it challenges assumptions, surfaces blind spots, and leads to stronger decisions.
The Everything DiSC behavioral framework is one useful lens for understanding how people prefer to communicate, make decisions, and collaborate.
- D style focuses on results and action, and wants the “what” answered.
- i style brings big-picture optimism and a strong focus on people and relationships, and wants the “who” answered.
- S style looks at practicality, implementation, and long-term impact on people, and wants the “how” answered.
- C style tends to focus on accuracy, quality, analysis, and evidence and want the “why” answered. They are likely to ask “what are the risks?” and want assumptions and details examined.
These roles complement each other when the team understands that’s what’s happening. Understanding your own approach and reading those of the people around you leads to better decisions and fewer surprises when things get complicated.
Talking Points for HR & Learning and Development Leaders
If you’re pitching this cultural shift to your executive team, use these points to bridge the gap:
- Shift from ‘Training’ to ‘Business Performance’: Frame the culture shift as a strategic move to improve decision-making speed and quality, moving beyond just ‘booking workshops.’
- The Cost of Inaction: Emphasize that decision-paralysis or delayed decisions often cost more than the proposed culture initiative.
- Focus on ‘Thinking Out Loud’: Instead of a 2-day workshop, propose a leadership rhythm where managers explain the why behind decisions, ensuring that judgment is built into daily work.
Build a Culture Where Better Decisions Happen
If your team is hesitating to take ownership, look beyond their skill set and evaluate the environment they operate in.
- Are decision-making boundaries and authority clear?
- Do your managers coach through mistakes, or do they default to blame?
- Is your culture open to constructive challenge before a major call is made?
Building an environment that drives high-quality decision-making requires intentional effort across individual behavioral styles and overall team dynamics. Tools like the Team Alignment Survey (to identify gaps in clarity and alignment and Everything DiSC® (to leverage diverse behavioral strengths) provide the insight leaders need to cultivate a culture where great decision-making happens naturally at every level.
Ready to strengthen decision-making across your team? Let’s talk.
FAQ
How can leaders encourage employees to make decisions independently?
Give employees clear decision-making boundaries, explain the reasoning behind important decisions, and avoid punishing every outcome that differs from what a leader would have chosen. Coaching people through mistakes helps build confidence and judgment over time.
When should a leader step in and make a decision?
Leaders should step in when a decision exceeds someone's authority, carries significant risk, affects areas outside the team members responsibility, or requires information they don't have access to. The goal is to provide support without taking away ownership unnecessarily.
References
1. https://www.bain.com/insights/decision-insights-7-create-a-decision-focused-culture
2. https://hbr.org/2026/07/great-leaders-know-which-emotions-their-feedback-will-trigger
